


Make my messes matter, make this chaos count

by rillaelilz



Category: Being Human (UK), The Almighty Johnsons
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, former soldier!Mitchell, vampire!Anders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-01
Updated: 2015-09-01
Packaged: 2018-04-18 11:31:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4704533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rillaelilz/pseuds/rillaelilz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>See, the thing is, they’re two walking stereotypes. It’s only fair that they should meet and mash like chocolate and vanilla mingling on a cone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Make my messes matter, make this chaos count

**Author's Note:**

> The [Summer Fandom Raffle Exchange](http://gatheringfiki.tumblr.com/post/127826595685/summer-fandom-raffle-exchange-prompts-masterlist) makes you do things XD I wrote this for the prompt _#138 - Anders/Mitchell, vampire!Anders_ and things got... weird. *hides*  
>  Title's from [Jupiter](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqrEox67O78) (Sleeping at last).

See, the thing is, they’re two walking stereotypes. It’s only fair that they should meet and mash like chocolate and vanilla mingling on a cone.

 

At times it seems so obvious, if you just care to look at them.

Mitchell is the pristine soldier slowly and willingly giving in to grief; everything surrounding him is like an accessory in this ploy – the small, anonymous flat, the cropped hair going messy, the gloomy marks of insomnia smudged under his eyes. Every detail tallies perfectly with the rest of the picture.

He doesn’t take flattery well – mostly since he hang this  _Undeserving_  sign on his own head.

There’s an early stage where Mitchell probably expects him to comment on the stubble shadowing his face, like Anders is sure the guy’s mother often does, but Anders couldn’t care less.

 

About Anders, he has some… hidden talents, you could say, but lacks tact and a reflection. His life– or is existence a more fitting word for it? Hold on, let’s rewind it. 

His  _existence_  so far has been a rich, decadent, golden pie crust filled with crap and sprinkled with just a dash of regret – what with sharp canines and a tendency to fuck up, you understand. Speaking of which, he’s so sure he’ll scare Mitchell shitless with his usual trick, he could almost feel disappointed when the man just reaches out and probes his fang with a curious fingertip. Heck, he doesn’t even  _bleed_. Maybe that’s what makes them both laugh like a pair of loons.

This will surprise exactly nobody, but that’s the first  _honest_  laugh Anders has laughed in forty-odd years, no pooling blood, no human guts involved.

 

 

Mitchell has his own issues, of course; in the form of slight resentment, PTSD symptoms and a limp in his right leg – the gunshot spared his life but not his stride, so to speak, and whether it ever really healed or not is still debatable.

He’s a quirky guy, all in all. He fights loneliness off with coffee and puts kisses on your wounds like patches. His hands tremble on their own accord sometimes, and other times they simply hesitate, but still they can open, _unfurl_  at night like some of those flowers that only bloom for the moon to see, and they offer themselves wide-spread and giving – an innocent obscenity broken men shouldn’t be free to grace other broken men with.

He wraps himself around Anders’ waist, lips nestled on his beatless heart, and this one time it’s drizzling outside, thunder just a mighty show off banging at their – Mitchell’s,  _Mitchell’s_  – window as Anders’ fingers curl like curious vines in dark, barely finger-deep hair.

“I could help you,” Mitchell says, eyes quiet and begging, his casual tone not his most brilliant façade; and Anders is already slipping away, even though he doesn’t move, doesn’t flinch, doesn’t even breathe – he could inhale false hopes and tempting warmth and honestly, he needs neither.

“Don’t,” he warns playfully, and shifts so they’re touching again and  _fully_ , legs coiling up until they’re bent Vs around Mitchell. “Don’t help me,” he teases again, and hopes he didn’t choke on the words, prays – does that count as blasphemy? – that his perfect grin did better than Mitchell’s nonchalance.

 

He can’t read Mitchell’s eyes or what the man saw in his own in that moment – oh yes,  _yes he can_ , the liar – so he just takes this one last liberty and pulls John down for a kiss, eyes closed shut and mouth open.

 

Something inside of him laughs. Sex makes gloomy afternoons pass so much faster than the average shitty novel-reading woman would want.

It’s pretty convenient for him, to take and give and then untangle his and Mitchell’s feet, watch him drift off into every good crippled soldier’s sleep and let him snore the lazy hours away in that fuzzy fashion of his.

It’s a good job he can ignore the pull of his scent, the siren call of Mitchell’s blood as it sets a quiet, lulling pace, the faint sheen of sweat drying off on his own skin when the blankets pool around him and leave him shivering in this naked, pink-blotched shell. He’s so good at this – the  _ignoring_  part, that’s always been the trickiest one, but  _practice makes perfect_.

 

So, by the time Mitchell’s eyelids slip open on the half-moon hanging out of his window, Anders is long gone.

 

 

Mitchell is an old-fashioned kind of  _romantic sod_ ; it wouldn’t surprise Anders if he were to be met by a bouquet of roses and chocolates on the doorstep. That never happens –  _thank God_  – but Mitchell does attack him, by unleashing the power of everyday routine-ness on him. 

Anders does his best to resist, but centuries of age and laziness must have rubbed off on his reflexes, because he accidentally kisses back each of their rare Good Morning Kisses, nudges every  _hey_  with an involuntary  _hey yourself_ , awkwardly lets Mitchell’s hand fiddle with his own when they sit in the theatre and even eskimo-kisses Mitchell’s nose when they snog in the back rows like bloody teens.

He reminds himself that this isn’t good for anyone, that he will eventually get bored and quit this sham of a thing between them and he tries, with commendable desperation, to make Mitchell get the hint too.

Seriously, he puts his rotten soul into this one task – he snarls, he disappears, he slithers in and out of Mitchell’s life and waits for the man to throw him out of it for good, holding onto the chance for loathing, so that Mitchell can at least have the pleasure to be the one to say that it’s over – a kindness Anders hasn’t spared for anyone else so far.

Maybe there’s a part of him that thinks Mitchell deserves it, who knows.

 

 

There’s  _frailty_  in Mitchell’s strong and lithe body – Anders finds it in the way he will squirm and hide his lame leg whenever he can, and in the way he’ll love you with everything he has but will deliberately despise himself, for whatever proof of unworthiness he’s found this time around.

Strangely enough, he’s the first thing Anders reckons needs to be cherished.

 

It does become clear after some time, you know; that Mitchell is one too many firsts for him, and that Anders doesn’t even mind.

 

 

  
For all that he’s a clingy pup thing, Mitchell doesn’t try to hold him down or keep him on a leash. He doesn’t impose, he  _offers_ ; he doesn’t grab, he caresses – his often shaky hands always open, always a little safe haven, never a cage.

Not that he would manage to keep him caged, but Anders appreciates the sentiment anyway. It’s one of the few things you can appreciate people for  _Not even trying_ , and he’s an expert when it comes to that.

 

And as Mitchell is a first under so many aspects already, this one is neither a shock nor an exception.

John mellows this scary, dangerous thing they may or may not have with _would_  and  _could_  and  _maybe_ , throwing every certainty off balance because that’s how Anders likes it – no ties, no commitment, no promises of  _Forever_. Mitchell doesn’t ask for any of that.

Talk about  _firsts_.

“Maybe you could stay,” John ventures one midnight, in their sweaty tangle of limbs. Just spend the night, he says with a shrug, his chest wiggling under Anders’ head just a tad, like tiny ripples in the wake of his shoulders’ wave, and Anders agrees with a sated yawn.

 

 

It’s not the kind of thing non-committal people do, this… carrying around a small squishy package in your pocket and not calling it a present just to preserve a bit of dignity.

Then again, he shouldn’t have let his clothes casually end up in Mitchell’s once neat wardrobe, either. Or got his keys mixed up with Mitchell’s. Or found the time to watch the months pass by in Mitchell’s hair growing out and curling on his temples – the same way they had it on little girls in old black-and-white movies.

Hah,  _dignity_. What’s dignity to him.

 

 

He doesn’t drink from Mitchell. Mitchell would let him – he would, hell if he would, and not just for kicks or for arousal’s sake, but ‘cause he’s vulnerable and lonely, just as lonely as Anders has been for one crumb short of forever, and he craves that intimacy, that closeness.

But the point is, Anders can’t let Mitchell become addicted to him, any more than he wants to become addicted to Mitchell, whatever  _addiction_  means for them at this point.

See, things have a habit of getting too damn complicated when you take blood out of the equation.

 

Still, Anders doesn’t regret his choice – firsts, anyone? – and he doesn’t think too much, when he tucks Mitchell’s fingers in the new pair of gloves  _he_ bought, and notices that the man’s hands are trembling less than they used to some weeks back. He doesn’t see the danger in the way Mitchell’s eyes smile and his own hands vanish in a soft, colourful, mitten-flavored hug.

Well, maybe he should have.

 

 

The one thing you should know about Mitchell and make no mistake, is that the guy is fucking stubborn.

Uh,  _resilient_ , that is. As in, you can build all the walls you want, he’ll still manage to climb all the way up and wave at you from the top.

Yes, Mitchell is resilient. In his own, mitchellesque way. That’s how he patiently climbs up the wall.

He fixes coffee for two, he makes himself into a bumper for them both, he counters Anders’ whims with sunshine-dripping grins and doesn’t shave until he’s had Anders’ blessing for it.

 

He lets Anders watch, and Anders lets himself fall prey to the spell, hypnotized by the calm movements, by the sweeps of foam and the easy glide of the razor, as captivated by the scene as Mitchell seems to be by his reflection. He curls a hand on the side of Mitchell’s neck when he’s done, caught right as he’s dabbing at his damp face with a towel, and cups Mitchell’s steady pulse in his palm, stroking a thumb over his Adam’s apple.

“Let it grow next time,” he advises – but it’s more selfishness than anything else.

Vampires can’t do that easily, so Anders guesses he just relishes every trace of humanity he can see on Mitchell. Like – say, his stubble blooming into a proper beard, or the cramps that will make him helpless and tense, the occasional hot water bottle slipped under his calf; even the tinkling of his dog tags, or his nightly cravings for tea, the frayed outline of his scar if one dares. It’s all  _him_  and human and painfully right in its humanity, all due, all expected, all Mitchell, and it’s reassuring in its own way.

 

It’s more or less the same feeling he gets from the dishes laid out for two on the table, from Mitchell’s spaghetti and a touch burnt meatballs, from the peculiar scent of the laundry soap John’s mother always buys for him – a strange mix of lavender and an unfathomable something else – and from the out-of-place instincts Anders has to claim  _that_  specific spot on the sofa as his own and really, it’s almost unnerving how Mitchell just lets him, merely tucking himself against the vampire’s side, throwing a blanket on them both and bribing Anders into silence by letting him hold the remote.

 

It’s the same little warm thing that strikes Anders when he himself slides down beneath the sheets to soothe leg aches with kisses, just like Mitchell inadvertently taught him, placing gentle pecks on still too-fresh scars.

It’s like a slip of one’s tongue, mostly, but you’ll forgive a poor soul like Anders – he’s constantly under siege. An affectionate siege. A subtle one, too.

So subtle, in fact, that he doesn’t truly realize what’s going on until he’s  _home_ and hears Mitchell whistle a sixties’ song and limp happily around the kitchen, and Anders catches himself with the word on his lips one second too late.


End file.
